The night was cold with the temperature falling to just under 10 degrees Celcius. Luckily it quickly got warner after breakfast with two fleece tops no longer necessary.
Our first stop on the way south was the Mouraki Boulders, ancient spherical boulders on the beach. We continued on to Dunedin, with another tailgate lunch at a rather windy rest area beside the beach. When we got to Dunedin it had just rained and it started pouring again. Funnily enough the meteorological service forecast no rain for the day, with no precipitation having been recorded. I guess showers must not count. We first drove around and then strolled around downtown Dunedin, a university city with a good feel to it and the second largest city on the South Island. With close to 130,00 people it is quite a bit smaller than Christchurch which has close to 390,000 people. Like most towns Dunedin has no highrises, and most houses are bungalows or maybe two stories. There are some hills in the city and when you look down some main streets in the city centre you can see the surrounding rural hill not far away. There are some main shopping streets in the centre lined by older store buildings and at least two modern, more sophisticated malls integrated with access through somewhat obscure entrances from the main streets. Dunedin has quite a few historic buildings and we noticed that a lost of road construction is taking place. We had parked in the parking lot of the Countdown grocery store very close to the centre, made a purchase to justify our free parking but then may have slightly exceeded the official 90 minute limit for parking there.
Before heading to a campground for the night we drove to what supposedly is the world's steepest street. You can't drive up or down it as access is for residents only. After that we drove up the Otago Peninsula where we set up our tent at a holiday park in Portobello, cooked, ate and worked on the blog.
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